


Tipping Point

by templeremus



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Conflict, Drabble, Episode: s12e01-02 Spyfall, Episode: s12e02 Spyfall Part 2, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22252648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeremus/pseuds/templeremus
Summary: History is in flux, and the Doctor waits to see how the pieces will fall. Spoilers for the opening episodes of series 12.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Tipping Point

The Doctor stayed for the first week after Daniel Barton's escape.

For days the world teetered on the brink, as governments, executives and intelligence agencies in every nation scrambled to contain the damage. People kept indoors, either because soldiers ordered them to or out of some vestigial terror.

Meanwhile the tiny percentage who had any clear memory of that evening ran riot, setting fire to VOR offices or breaking into homes to obliterate every device that they found. Each edition of the evening news brought more arrests, another fall in VOR's company proflle. The trail on Barton had evaporated within minutes of his leaving the auditorium, but the Doctor had the feeling that he would emerge soon enough. Some people could not help but revisit the scene of their crime - consequences be damned. They were too in love with their own work, the paretic sort of love that saps the will without destroying its sufferer altogether. An obsession like that tended to be lifelong, and she was prepared, if need be, to follow it to its conclusion. Unlike him, she had the luxury of time.

"Is this it?" Yaz asked her, five days in. They were at Graham's place for the evening, and he had turned the TV up while he busied himself in the kitchen. Thousands of miles away, police officers were spraying tear gas into a crowd; the camera was weaving like a drunkard, and the flares were turning the sky red. "World War Three? Everything goes, and we start over?"

The Doctor said, "No." She did not say, _Not yet_. "This is a flashpoint. You find them everywhere, throughout history. Moments when change comes, where everything hangs in the balance. Humanity has to decide. It's up to you."

Ryan was picking at the living-room carpet. He looked up at the screen in snatches, and avoided anyone else's gaze. "How do we do?"

The Doctor studied them a moment: their tense, hunched outlines, bodies almost touching. Something in them reminded her of children, huddled together against the perils of the dark; but that was wrong, they were too calm for that, and there was too much knowledge in their half-lit faces.

"Some of you," she said, and the words caught - she tried again: "Some of you are magnificent."


End file.
